This may be true in some respect but NASA has led the way for many inventions on a global scale. It has provided many jobs and has gotten us where we are today. There is a point when being safe and moving on (after "The Fire", the Challenger and Columbia accidents, etc.) and yet there is what NASA is doing right now: being "anal" and stagnant. There are times when we should be cautious but still move on with our goals of space travel and exploration.

No, we will still need NASA for a very long time. I really cannot see space exploration and technological advancement without it.

_________________We are present in a time when we are not only able to dream about distant worlds...but to explore them...TOGETHER !!!

In my opinion, NASA will have to reexamine its role once the private sector firmly establishes itself in space. It's inevitable. The most interesting aspect of this entire scenario of commercializing space is how many American companies will go offshore to establish a commercial space venture just to avoid over regulation, and caps on creativity and innovation.

You also bring up a good point. But can you tell me which American space related companies will "go off shore" and take the necessary risks in order to override NASA's role in the space exploration/space travel sectors? What would be their specialization? How soon will they act.

I can't give any specifics. However, I will admit that my occassional browsing of Space.com's message boards on this particular topic of American companies going offshore to establish commercial space ventures is quite profound and prolific...

Anonymous wrote:

You also bring up a good point. But can you tell me which American space related companies will "go off shore" and take the necessary risks in order to override NASA's role in the space exploration/space travel sectors? What would be their specialization? How soon will they act.

Any launch provider organized as an American comany, for manned or unmanned vehicles, is still regulated by the U.S. govt. and still requires FAA licensing for operations. This holds true even if the company operates offshore. You can thank the Outer Space Treaty for that. Additionally, once a company goes overseas, the ITAR technology transfer laws become a major concern. Third, a company launching outside of U.S. territory is ineligible for government payloads (the government won't be a customer) In the end, operating offshore doesn't lessen the burden, it only increases it.

If you want to decrease the cost of getting into space, first, throw away the Outer Space Treaty, and replace it with something a little more friendly to businesses. Second, re-write the ITAR regulations to be a little-less Cold-War oriented. While you're at it, lose that stupid Moon Treaty. That would be a good start. Would encourage private investment in new companie and lessen the regulatory burden on those companie. And it wouldn't decrease safety.

A 'Fair Price' is based on real costs, some reasonable profit to the provider plus whatever the buyer is happy to pay. So I guess Tito & Shuttleworth's $20 million ticket was fair.

If an X-Prize contestant is spending $20 million startup, with $5 million in expenses a year for the next 10 years (I'm completely guessing), and imagines it can send 3 people up-down every day for 10 years, plus make a 20% Profit (so aiming for $84m in ticket sales divided by 10,950 tickets over 10 years) then a fair price for a ticket might be $7,671.23.

Well I certainly hope that in 10 years the 'Fair Price' will be around $10,000!

To get back the costs the private spacecraft teams and enterprises invested they will have to sell the use of their crafts to those who buy the best prices.

But these buyers needn't to be travelers or tourists - some of them may produce very short films to be used in advertising, others may want to process an very short technical experiment needed for the improvement of a product or its production process.

These buyers having assured to be serviced there may be place for a person not used else. In this case the payments of the other buyers may reduce the price this tourist has to pay because the constructors are interested in the tourists contribution to get their investment costs back from the market.

It depends what you mean by a fair price. Each of these future suppliers have commited huge amounts of man-hours, resources and cash on the hope of getting a reasonable return for the risks they have taken. They have clearly formulated business plans based on the size of the potential economic market they intend to target. If they have mis-judged this figure, they will have failed as a business regardless of the technology and hardware they have built. I can only assume that a business model based on fast turn-around and reusability of their craft will be cheaper to fly on than one that can't match them in these fields.

In Economics we have a term named "Deckungsbeitrag" in german - I don't know the english translation this moment. "contribution to coverage of costs" perhaps may an approximation to the right english term.

There are several different kinds of costs: variable costs that are dependent of the amount of production of services or products, fix costs that are independent of the amount and common costs the fix costs are a part of. Some common costs are fix, others are variable.

If a team finds a tourist paying a price higher than the variable non-common costs per unit of service or product then this tourist should receive the travel to space if there is place left for him.

This is the case I mentioned. It is interesting in these young days of private space travels. after some growth of that market it won't be longer as interesting as now.